Let me just first say that I stopped paying attention to this thread thanks to Mike's trolling, but I like how the tone changed from "you're an idiot", "you know nothing," "DATA!" ... to "oh as it turns out you are actually onto something"
Anyways, we get to face
Player Profile: Al Garces - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports in the next cycle. Garces concedes high volume of HR but in his defense SJ is ++ for HR. He has good splits but those P1-P5 values stand out so drastically for how bad they are--- 41.2 average pitch, that's like Low-A/Hi-A quality at best. (By comparison Mahoney is 55.4 and Powell is 67.4, ML best is often 70+. The reason I list this is based on mchalesarmy's "best pitches" data-mining project). Garces' career opponent line of .260/.327/.422, his splits help that OAV but that .162 isolated power number might seem high for somebody with such high splits.
My thesis since the thread began has been that slugging% and/or HR-rate is exclusively a function of pitches and control (caveat- I do suppose it's technically possible that CF defense is capable of "robbing" HR, but when I check boxscores the + plays are almost always on shallow flyouts rather than deep flyouts. That text could be true or it could be meaningless so I have no idea, but at this time I am not willing believe that OFers are robbing HRs, so I believe this is defense-independent)
For the hell of it I went into the league records section to see how that compares to "all-time worst slugging % against, (min 810 innings)" and although this world is an adolescent one of 20 seasons, here were the bottom 5, in order starting with the worst:
Player Profile: James Lee - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports : .308/.371/.509, career best average pitch 50.25, ISO .201
Player Profile: Miguel Gonzales - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports : .295/.407/.493, career best avg pitch 60.66 (3-pitch SP), ISO .198
Player Profile: Carlos Solano - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports : .289/.347/.488, career best avg pitch 45.5, ISO .199
Player Profile: Vince Hunter - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports : .292/.350/.486, career best avg pitch 56 (3-pitch SP) ISO .194
Player Profile: Delino Parra - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports : .292/.360/.486, career best avg pitch 63.75 ISO .194
(career ISO by itself is not a search filter for pitchers)
Not sure if there is a ton to be learned there, they're each below average in all areas, Gonzales' .407 OBP is hilarious, they all play in skewed hitters' parks but they're all decent at GBFB ... is the conclusion simple that HR rate might be a function of ballpark more than any other singular factor? Seems awfully overpowered
I searched by the Fresno team only (same owner + ballpark since season 1, always uses strong defense and 90+ PC catchers but his division teams have always played in Scottsdale and Salem which are ++ HR), his top 5 included all active players so I couldn't mine for historical average pitch data. Interestingly enough I noticed that all of the players I've looked at so far have "Curveball" listed as one of their pitches. I did this again for the Portland franchise, same situation with 1 owner for the entire history--- exact same situation, all "throw" Curveball...
Could just be a coincidence.... but maybe not. I realize the predominant theory on here is that pitch names are aesthetic-only but anecdotally from my own observations that's not necessarily 100% true. Dominant power relievers often share 90+ for control, VEL, and P1 Fastball; guys who throw sinkers/split fb share a pattern with high VEL GBFB P1 and may have less control, pitchers with the widest gaps (15+) between strong-side-split and weak-side-split (ie RHP with 80 vR and 55 vL) often have Slider on the list, which is intuitive based on the real-life effect that the slider has on RvR and LvL. Perhaps hbd arms who have a below-par attribute for the specific Px slot for Curveball are giving up more HR, maybe that's a real thing. Somebody would really need to put in heavy time and effort analyzing this, not going to be me because I don't care enough but I know there are plenty of nerds out there in hbd land
(Curveball logic would also apply for fastball, of course.
www.hardballtimes.com/what-makes-a-home-run-pitch/ www.hardballtimes.com/fastball-slider-changeup-curveball-an-analysis/ www.wsj.com/articles/SB108568923118723199 www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2015/5/20/8624789/usage-rates-great-pitches-felix-pomeranz-mchugh-chavez-colon etc etc, these links are more for fun than anything else I suppose.)
No idea whether the devs are capable of integrating this stuff into the decision trees. But I do refuse to automatically assume that pitch names are 100% aesthetic just because the forum-captain says so. Regardless- HR rate still has no direct correlation with GBFB (& vice versa) so I'm glad we could finally all come to that same conclusion together. Let's all sit back and enjoy watching the Toast (hopefully!) demolish Garces in the PM2